The Days We Knew
by CreatorsOfWorlds
Summary: Her name was Uzumaki Kushina, and they loved her. Root fic.


_A/N - It is my firm belief, due to my founding-era head canon concerning Danzo being Mito's apprentice, that he was Kushina's guardian._

_Enjoy some fluffy Root agent rambling with no names involved because it might compromise their agents in the field._

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_Disclaimer__ - I don't own them, or Danzo would be getting a lot more screen time._

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_**The days we knew**_

_**o**_

_So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. _

_- Gaston Bachelard_

**_o_**

They don't know what to make of her at first, the sturdy and yet fragile seeming little girl half hidden under her thick red hair that Danzo-sama brings home with him because Mito, the great lady of the Founding, the first to make herself a living sacrifice for the sake of her village, has finally passed on to the life beyond death and has named her former apprentice as the guardian of the new jinchuuriki of Konoha. Dressed in her formal mourning clothes, expensive black silk with the Uzumaki crest repeated five times on the back in carefully worked orange and red threads, and clinging to her new guardian's hand, nine-year old Kushina, the last known member of the Uzumaki clan, looks far too young to carry so much responsibility on her shoulders.

But if there is one thing the shinobi of Root do know, it is that responsibility, tragedy and duty have never waited upon age.

Danzo-sama is made nervous by his new responsibility; they know this because he repeats their orders twice before dismissing them, always a sign that something else is distracting him. They knew already that they would have to double their watchfulness; there had been a detail of men set to guard little Uzumaki Kushina ever since she first came to Konoha and now, in the aftermath of the transferral of the Kyuubi and Mito's death, the need for care would be greater than ever. And of course, in order to keep a secure watch over an active little girl, it is sometimes necessary to - bend the rules of invisibility and silence.

At least, that is what they tell themselves the next morning when Kushina wheedles her guards out of hiding with a charmingly pleading voice and a pot of fresh coffee.

"I always made it for Mito-sama in the morning-time," she announces to the empty air outside her window, theatrically waving the pot back and forth, "and she liked it, an' she said that Danzo-shishou's ANBU drink it all the time, so I _know _you like it too." She gives a heavy sigh and makes a show of shrugging her shoulders. "Danzo-shishou left too early for me to give him any, so 'less somebody drinks it, it's all going to be wasted."

The shinobi of Root are expected to show the level of strength and endurance which is suited to their vocation and duties; however, there are some things that no man among them can stand. Wasted coffee is one of them. After all, guarding and conserving the resources of Konoha is an important thing - a very important thing, and there is no denying that coffee, that magical and sadly expensive import, is one of those resources.

Kushina beams around her at the tall, dark figures who have suddenly materialized out of the street outside. "And now," she declares with such conviction and happy confidence that not one of them have the heart to disillusion her, "now we can all be friends!"

Even at the age of nine and with a terrible loss only recently put behind her, Kushina has a way of putting people at their ease. She bustles around the room pulling out chairs and fussing with cups and chattering away about how much she loves the house that Danzo-shishou lives in and _did _they know that it was made by the first Hokage, and she was learning sealing and Mito-sama had taught her a lot, but Danzo-shishou was going to teach her even more, and everything - her lips tremble a little, but she carries on bravely - everything is going to be just _wonderful._

The small talk and the coffee are easy to excuse as a careful relocation of resources and a judicial bending of their mission objective; less easy to explain is the way that they find themselves bemusedly being introduced to an array of Kushina's stuffed animals, something that the red-haired girl carries out as solemnly as if she were at a daimyo's castle. "This is Rabbit-san, this is Duck-san, and this is Turtle-san," she explains. "And Tiger-san, and Bear-san, and Bird-san…"

The shinobi of Root, who spent their childhoods believing that training was play and that play was training, and that there were no more fascinating toys than blunted shuriken and the fake exploding tags that they scribbled themselves, are slightly taken aback at the sheer number of soft, plushy things that one little girl can possess, but in front of Kushina's expectant eyes they could do nothing more than make properly admiring comments.

Somehow, it turns into a game. This is treated as the edgy, radical activity that it is, and with one eye on the doors and windows for Danzo-sama's possible return, and the other on the stuffed rabbit that is being waved in their faces by an excited Kushina, announcing that it wants to be their friend and _would _they like to go on a little walk, they immerse themselves seriously in learning the rules of Make-Believe. High-pitched voices, they discover, are a must, as is the ability to believe that a wooden chair is a mountain and that a carpet is a forest.

The recent friction between Suna and Iwa leads naturally into a state of affairs where Rabbit-san and Turtle-san both lay claim to the same patch of floor, and events seem to be shaping up nicely for an all-out war, especially when Bear-san is caught spying behind a table leg. Then Kushina, who has been frowning abstractedly over her stuffed animals' unusually sophisticated politics, brightens up with a smile and decides that both aggressors were very sorry that they had been so cross, and that they were going to be friends now.

The shinobi who is voicing the desperate and dangerous Rabbit-san blinks at her, abstractedly waving his stuffed animal as he protests, "But, Kushina-sama, matters have gone too far for that. Why, the documents that Rabbit-san found -"

Kushina shakes her head gently. "Uh-uh," she says, and makes Turtle-san bump along to his former opponent and rub noses. "See, now they're hugging. They're happy that they made friends."

"But the land dispute hasn't been settled!" puts in the one holding Tiger-san. "How can they -"

"Duck-san will make that all better," Kushina says firmly. "_He'll _decide where it should go."

The shinobi blink at each other. "A neutral mediator?" one mutters. "I didn't know that Duck-san was a samurai -"

Bear-san jumps up and down excitedly. The Root agent holding him seems to have forgotten to turn off his squeaky voice. "But the samurai have never been strictly neutral. Duck-san could have hidden motives. I suggest that Bird-san and Shark-san give him a thorough background check -"

There is a quiet cough from the doorway, where Danzo is leaning on his cane and observing a squad of his best men crawling around on the floor with the jinchuuriki, a horde of shabby stuffed animals and expressions of furious concentration.

There's never exactly been a record for how fast a team of Root shinobi have been able to drop an assortment of stuffed ducks and bears and line up in a perfect row, but if there had been, they probably would have beaten it.

"You have an explanation for this," Danzo says. It is most definitely not a question.

"The duck is settling the land dispute between the rabbit and the turtle, sir," one offers sheepishly, "but we suspect that his integrity may have been compromised…"

"They were keeping me company!" Kushina says brightly, trotting over to her guardian and taking his hand. "There's still some coffee left, Danzo-shishou!"

They afterwards agree that it was probably the coffee that allowed them to leave the room unlectured on how the ability to protect Konoha while remaining hidden in the shadows had never depended, and _would _never depend, on one's ability to pretend to be a small stuffed bear.

Danzo does remark to thin air as he leaves his house the next day, "If she invites you in again, use the door. The windowsill is getting scuffed," to which the thin air preserves an apologetic silence.

And they use the door. Where the shinobi of Root are concerned, a word to the wise is sufficient.

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_Review, please._


End file.
